Search: venezuela

Milton Friedman famously said that if Big Government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand. To get an idea of how right he was, consider that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but is under socialist control. In its second-largest city Maracaibo, gasoline is exceeding difficult to obtain:

Some drivers said they’d had to wait almost 24 hours to fuel up, and people have been grabbing catnaps on the hoods of cars or in truck beds. …

A satellite cruising over Maracaibo on Thursday captured pictures of cars lined up for a mile (1.6 kilometers) through the city to the pumps…

US sanctions intended to drive the socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro from power are blamed for the shortage. Meanwhile, “state run oil-firm PDVSA is producing 10 to 15% of its capacity.”

On the bright side, if you do manage to obtain any gas in Venezuela, it is so heavily subsidized by the government that it is virtually free.

Venezuela has actually put into practice the ideology promulgated by agenda-setting Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Let’s see if they think it would be a good idea for the USA to follow suit. Daniel Di Martino had to flee his country. He gives a first-hand report on what socialism did to Venezuela and what it will do to us:

If we could get this video in front of enough voters, America might be saved from the likes of AOC, Bernie Sanders, et al. But don’t expect the mainstream media to show anything like it.

Under socialism, you eventually run out of everything except equality. This includes water, as those who have not yet escaped Venezuela are learning:

Residents in San Diego, Carabobo state, flooded social media with pictures and videos of the black water while complaining it had been contaminated with oil.

That gives an idea of how much oil Venezuela is floating on, which is why it was the wealthiest country in Latin America prior to socialism. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of crude oil in the world. Under capitalism, that oil would be converted into money, and the money would build functional infrastructure that would provide citizens with water. Under socialism, the oil is useless, because you can’t drink it or even bathe in it.

The city has suffered with an intermittent water supply for months, made worse by a week-long power blackout that has completely cut it off in some areas, local journalists said. …

People have been forced to scavenge for water from sewers, drains and rivers. …

The blackout has worsened the situation of a country already facing a hyperinflationary economic collapse that has spurred a mass migration and turned once-basic items like corn flour and toilet paper into unaffordable luxuries.

Sympathy is tempered by the fact that Venezuelans voted for this. True, their elections have degenerated into charades, but this ball was started rolling when the Venezuelan version of Bernie Sanders was legitimately elected by the same sort of spiteful, envious fools who infest our own country in alarmingly large numbers.

Gallup confirms that Democrats prefer socialism to economic freedom. Prominent Democrats are even moving beyond quasi-capitalist half-socialism to something that looks a lot like the full-bore communism inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. Socialism is particularly popular on college campuses, due to saturation brainwashing by the progressives in charge. It is less popular among people who have experienced socialism first hand, like Venezuelans at the recent Venezuelan Freedom rally in DC:

Bloomberg sums up the situation ham-fisted socialism has created in Venezuela, which was until recently the wealthiest country in Latin America:

It’s hard to overstate how disastrous the reign of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro has been for Venezuela. A recent series of Bloomberg articles vividly depicts the hellish, never-ending struggle for survival in Caracas, the country’s capital. Hungry children roam the streets, people are fleeing the country, health care is almost nonexistent, violence is endemic, even water is scarce. Chavez’s so-called Bolivarian revolution took a peaceful, middle-income country and transformed it into a nightmare that puts the ruinous Soviet Union of the 1980s to shame.

It’s important for other countries — including wealthy ones like the U.S. — not to ignore Venezuela, but to use it as a cautionary tale. Politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have embraced socialism, as have many young Americans.

The nightmare unfolding in Venezuela will not dissuade the oligarchical collectivist authoritarians who dominate the Democrat Party. They plan to put the socialist pedal to the metal:

The party agenda is increasingly embracing big-government policies like “Medicare-for-all” and guaranteed jobs programs — as well as an aggressive “Green New Deal” that would include all this and more as part of a fundamental overhaul to America’s economy and specifically its energy sector.

Obama declared war on this vital sector of the economy, boasting that he would cause energy prices to skyrocket and that anyone who tried to build a new coal plant would be bankrupted. His Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar gloated about the administration having its “boot on the neck” of BP. The moment they have the political leverage, Democrats will resume this senseless, damaging war — and escalate it.

As far back as last summer, Democrats viewed socialism more positively than economic freedom. At the rate they are radicalizing, by 2020 they will probably view Stalin more favorably than FDR.

Socialists as malevolently wacky as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have taken over not only Venezuela, but major countries. In Russia and China, the results were poverty, misery, slavery, and genocide on a massive scale.

Never mind the alarming Green New Deal. Even the relatively modest Medicare for All would cost tens of $trillions over a decade. With the USA already shouldering a $22 trillion national debt, economic collapse is hardly inconceivable. When it comes, anything is possible — as the horrors of the USSR and Mao’s China proved.

“Together, Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals would effectively eliminate fossil fuels from most of society, destroy millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of wealth, require ‘upgrading’ every home and business in America, create a national federal jobs-guarantee program, impose single-payer health care (costing trillions more), establish a new system of publicly owned banks, run up the national debt by countless trillions of dollars, and move the United States closer than ever to socialism,” Justin Haskins, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “If we don’t stop it, it will destroy our economy for a whole generation of Americans.”

What is happening in Venezuela — or worse — can and will happen here if radicalized Democrats have their way.

It takes more than resources to make a wealthy country. Most important is a culture that allows resources to be exploited. Such a culture has the character to resist leftism. For example, Venezuela floats on a lake of oil, yet the state of North Dakota produces more oil:

Venezuela, by some measures home to the world’s largest crude reserves, saw oil output drop in September to a four-decade low of 1.17 million barrels. The same month saw North Dakota, owner of the Guinness World Record for the most snow angels, produce a record of nearly 1.3 million barrels.

Meanwhile, the socialism they succumbed to forces Venezuelans to eat pets and zoo animals.

Imagine the wealth that would be produced if Venezuela were populated by North Dakotans.

Recently the wealthiest country in Latin America, Venezuela is now a basket case, the economy having shrunken by 50% in 5 years. We owe it to Venezuelans to at least learn from their mistakes, so that their suffering is not for nothing. There is more to the story than Hugo Chávez taking power and then flushing the country down the toilet of socialism. As explained at Moonbattery.com sponsor Ammo.com, the roots of the moonbattery go back much earlier… Read more »

During the Vietnam War, fellow-traveling liberals used to bleat piteously that “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” This saying is true enough but can be applied just as well to socialism. Horses demonstrate how unhealthy it can be to living things in Venezuela:

Rafael Toro, a student at Venezuela’s top veterinary school, suspected something was amiss when a beloved horse called Miss Congeniality didn’t greet him at the fence one recent morning along with others in the campus’ small herd.

The bright-eyed, bay-colored mare had earned her nickname for helping disabled students overcome their fear of riding horses. They say she was smart and even trotted up when you called her name.

To his shock, Toro discovered the horse’s skin and dismembered bones hidden among trees in the corner pasture of the sprawling campus in the central Venezuelan city of Maracay. Thieves overnight had hopped the fence, slaughtered the horse and made off with her meat — either to sell or to feed their hungry families.

It isn’t an isolated case. Horsemeat can bring good money in the socialist utopia that was recently the wealthiest country in Latin America, before Hugo Chavez imposed an ideology similar to that of today’s Democratic Party.

Zimbabwe isn’t the only country to provide a roadmap to the future for the rainbow utopia South Africa. There is also Venezuela.

Julius Malema, formerly of the African National Congress and now of the even more extreme Economic Freedom Fighters, is to some extent steering the course in South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC needs to keep pace with him or lose the support of a population that will not tolerate the achievement inequity that is inevitable when whites and blacks live in the same country — thus the ongoing drive to confiscate white property without compensation.

In 2010, Malema led a youth delegation to the country to study its economic model.

Malema, both as an ANC and EFF member, has also stated that Venezuela is a successful example of nationalisation – and South Africa could learn lessons from it.

The nationalization of major industries is a major cause of Venezuela’s economic collapse, which has led to 2.3 million people escaping the country since 2014. Inflation is expected to reach 1 million percent by the end of the year.

But at least that isn’t as bad as Zimbabwe. Before it abandoned its currency, Zimbabwe managed to push the inflation rate to 89.7 sextillion (10^21) percent with race-based socialist policies of the type gathering steam in South Africa.

Countermoonbat economist Milton Friedman is said to have said that if you put Big Government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand, meaning that socialism creates shortages out of abundance. Venezuela, possessor of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has proven this to be correct after succumbing to socialism.

In Táchira, the regime tried out a scheme to prevent foreigners from exploiting subsidized prices, although it would be hard to imagine many foreigners wanting to venture into Venezuela these days. The result was even longer lines than usual.

Drivers reportedly had to wait between 72 to 96 hours in the searing heat outside service stations for the arrival of gasoline, a product in increasingly short supply amid the country’s dire economic crisis.

the scene eventually turned to chaos as drivers began to protest by blocking the streets and covering them with debris. Despite the efforts of police to calm the situation, Maduro eventually suspended the new policy.

Even under a socialist dictatorship, it pays to push back.

But Venezuelans can expect continued difficulty obtaining gasoline, as with all other necessities. Oil production is under the control of military generals rather than people who have the first clue about oil production.

Thanks go to Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, for teaching us the sort of economic lessons that our own homegrown socialists have conspicuously failed to learn. For example, here is what minimum wage laws accomplish when there are no conservatives in a position to keep them relatively restrained:

Nearly 40 percent of all Venezuelan stores have closed —some of them perhaps permanently —after the government of President Nicolas Maduro increased the minimum salary by nearly 3,500 percent in one fell swoop, according the National Council of Commerce and Services of Venezuela.

Minimum wage laws are invariably part of a larger package of pernicious leftist lunacy.

Many of the companies, which had been barely surviving the gradual collapse of the economy, saw the salary increase and other changes announced last month as the fatal blow in a series of policies that have been gradually strangling their businesses.

Every government decree creates problems that are addressed with more government decrees. In this case, business owners were forbidden to raise prices in an attempt to pay the artificially inflated wage. For many, this made it impossible to stay in business while complying with the law.

Government policies have also created hyperinflation. The bolivar lost two-thirds of its value in August. The fix: retailers are required to sell at prices that no longer make sense economically. This is another reason many are closing up shop.

About four in 10 stores have not opened since Maduro announced the salary increase two weeks ago. And some of the stores that did open are liquidating their merchandise and plan to close definitively when that’s done.

Even as we watch this tragedy unfold, many Americans express a desire to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps by supporting Bernie Sanders and the radicalized Democrat Party.

One nice thing about allowing the government to take control of the economy the way Elizabeth Warren wants is that it allows a simple solution to every problem. Not enough revenue because little wealth is produced under socialism, even in the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves? Then just print more money. Hyperinflation makes the money worthless? Just chop off a few zeroes:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Friday that his socialist administration would issue new banknotes after lopping five zeroes off the beleaguered bolivar.

The move effectively devalues Venezuela’s currency by around 96 percent, with the bolivar set to go from about 285,000 per dollar to 6 million. Other measures announced in Maduro’s speech to the nation last week included highly-subsidized gas prices, a higher corporate tax rate and a massive minimum wage increase.

Imagine trying to run a business under the conditions that prevail in Venezuela. No matter; capitalist exploiters deserve the worst. Just ask Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats don’t appear concerned about the results in Venezuela of imposing the policies championed by Bernie Sander, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et al. Maybe this will change when they learn that socialism has reduced Venezuelans to eating donkeys:

A few years ago, there were so many donkeys, or burros, in the Venezuelan state of Falcón that they were a problem — herds everywhere, causing highway crashes and blocking airport runways.

But over the past three years, the herds have shrunk dramatically as thousands of burros have been slaughtered for their meat by Venezuelans suffering through a near-famine.

Millennials may embrace socialism because they are too inexperienced to resist their brainwashing, but how is it that political veterans like the British Labour Party Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell glean nothing from the tragic consequences of imposing socialism, both past and present? Rather than learn, they stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and shout ludicrous lies:

When asked if Venezuela was a failed socialist economic model, McDonnell said: “It went wrong. I don’t think it is a socialist country.

“I think it took a wrong turn when Chávez went and I think unfortunately since then, I don’t think they have been following the socialist policies that Chávez developed. And as a result of that they’re experiencing problems.”

If it doesn’t work, it must not be true socialism. Not much of an argument, but it’s the only counterpoint socialists have against the deafening roar of history as it continues to unfold.

If only it were true that Venezuela is no longer socialist. Then the rebuilding could begin. The country’s abundant resources could be exploited, and people would once again have food, medicine, toilet paper, jobs, safety, and freedom.

If it is up to McDonnell, we will soon be saying the same about Britain.

When you succumb to moonbattery, you get the whole package — not just poverty and tyranny, but also AIDS, as demonstrated by socialist Venezuela:

H.I.V. has spread rapidly throughout the Orinoco Delta and is believed to have killed hundreds of the Warao indigenous people who live in settlements like Jobure de Guayo…

[T]he government has ignored the issue, medical specialists and Warao community leaders say, leaving the population to face a profound existential threat alone. Already, deaths and the flight of survivors have gutted at least one village.

AIDS activists and specialists say that H.I.V. infection rates and the number of AIDS-related deaths have skyrocketed. So, too, has the number of once stable H.I.V. patients whose health has collapsed for lack of a regular supply of antiretroviral drugs and medicines to treat opportunistic diseases.

On the bright side, even if there is hardly any healthcare in Venezuela, at least someone else pays for it.

You can’t blame socialism for all of Venezuela’s problems. Sometimes other aspects of moonbattery are to blame:

[Armando Beria] believes he may have contracted [HIV] through having sex with other men when he was younger — a common practice among young Warao, especially before they are married. Researchers believe that men having sex with men was an important means of early dissemination of H.I.V. among the Warao.

Now that it has become firmly established through depravity, the virus is spreading by heterosexual activity and through breast milk. Big Government isn’t going to help the Warao. Christian-type morals would have.

When Yolanda Abreu got her check for severance pay after five years working as a cardiologist, she let out a laugh of sheer disbelief: it was barely enough for a cup of coffee.

Like her, millions of Venezuelans have seen their salaries decimated by rampant hyperinflation that is expected to drive prices up by 13,000 percent this year, IMF figures show.

Her story hit the headlines after she tweeted a photo of the check for 156,584.29 bolivars, which equates to about $0.20 on the black market.

You can get a coffee for 20¢ in Venezuela? Not at Starbucks, you can’t. Then again, Starbucks may have to lower its prices after its new racial pandering policies reduce it to a homeless shelter. That’s the March of Progress.

Don’t worry about the inflation in Venezuela. The Workers’ President can fix it by raising the minimum wage some more.

On the eve of International Workers Day, Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro moved to double the monthly minimum wage, raising it by 95.4 percent to 2,555,500 bolivars — or $37 (30 euros), according to the central bank’s official DICOM rate.

No doubt similar measures will be taken in the USA, after Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, et al. have imposed a $15/hour make-work job as an entitlement.

No need to be terrified into turning away from Democrats’ agenda by its application in other countries; officials assure us that Venezuelan shelves are empty not because socialism has been imposed but due to the traditional capitalist sin of gluttony:

Venezuela’s former Vice President turned Minister of Education Elías Jaua claimed in remarks this weekend that the country’s depleted supermarkets would be full of food if people did not eat so much.

Jaua praised the socialist Bolivarian Revolution for bestowing upon the People the “right to eat meat, chicken, milk, that they did not have ten, 14 years ago.” Back then it was the other way around; they had the food, but allegedly no right to eat it. Now they have the right, but no food.

Bellows Jaua:

“If the Venezuelan people did not eat, surely the shelves would be full.”

Money is good — not just for the goods that it buys, but for what it represents: a standard of value. It is an essential tool in any functioning society. Socialist Venezuela demonstrates what happens when coercive meddling in economic matters destroys money. Francisco Toro of Caracas Chronicles reports in WaPo on a photo a friend sent him from Venezuela:

It’s not a very good picture, really, just a blurry cellphone shot of trash: some wrapping material, an old CD — the detritus left behind after a store was looted last week in San Felix, a city in the country’s southeast.

And yet I can’t stop thinking about it, because strewn about in the trash are at least a dozen 20-bolivar bills, small-denomination currency now so worthless even looters didn’t think it was worth their time to stop and pick them up.

According to the official exchange rate, each of those bills is worth $2. But everything official is a lie where Big Government lacks any restraint. In real life, these bills would only be valuable as toilet paper.

Prices are rising by over 80% per month. Money must be spent immediately, even indiscriminately, before it loses its value.

It sounds like it’s about prices rising fast, but it really isn’t. It’s about money breaking down. Under hyperinflation, money no longer works. It doesn’t store value. It just stops doing the basic things people expect money to do. It stops being something you want to have and turns into something you’ll do anything to avoid having: something so worthless you won’t even bend down and scoop it up off the floor while you’re looting.

Since most Venezuelans can no longer use money to acquire food, they have to resort to other means — e.g., looting.

Of course, few stores will think of restocking after they’ve been looted, and virtually none can find the capital to do so. So it looks as though we’re coming to the end of the line: Every last avenue for people to put a meal on the table has been exhausted. A video that went viral recently showed Venezuelans literally running into a cow pasture to stone a calf to death to try to get a meal.

The Bernie Sanders types running Venezuela are so corrupt and incompetent that they cannot even make money off the sea of oil the country is floating on. So socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro says it will turn to tourism for revenue. Good luck with that.

Due to the inevitable shortages, some hotels ration toilet paper. TVs often don’t work because there are no affordable parts for repairs. The lights don’t always come on. Only native Venezuelans use the hotels, and they tend to steal everything they can get their hands on, including appliance parts and light bulbs.

Societal collapse has produced an exploding crime rate. That alone is reason enough for tourists to steer clear, although a hotel owner reports that a Belgian fellow actually did book a room last year…

But he was spotted in town, the hotelier said, and one day after he checked in, six masked gunmen barged into the hotel lobby. They forced a front-desk clerk to take them to the man’s room.

Only 15 international airlines are still flying to Venezuela. More than 15 others have pulled out in the past two years, citing economic concerns and security troubles, including stolen luggage at airports. …

Airlines say the government has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from local ticket sales.

Then there is the 3,000% inflation rate, thanks to which a hotel room can end up costing hundreds of dollars per night.

Venezuela will make a great tourist destination, once it gets out from under socialist rule. In the meantime, someone should do an updated version of the Dead Kennedys’ punk rock classic “Holiday in Cambodia,” changing the country to Venezuela.

Great news for the workers of Venezuela: the minimum wage is going up by a whopping 40%!

Of course, there is a slight downside. Inflation has spiraled out of control (possibly topping 2,000% in 2017), and the minimum wage hike will make it even worse, so wages will still be insufficient to buy anything, even if there were anything in Venezuela to buy, with so many shops looted or gone out of business. Also, hardly anyone has a job anyway.

But 40% is a lot! The Democrat Party ought to adopt this as part of its platform.

Socialism would have worked fine in Venezuela, except for the fall in oil prices, right moonbats? Or maybe not, as even the New York Times admits:

A general with no energy experience has been installed as the head of the state oil company. Arrests, firings and desperate emigration have gutted top talent. Oil facilities are crumbling, while production is plummeting.

As the rest of the oil-producing world recovers on the back of stronger energy prices, Venezuela is getting worse, the result of dysfunctional management, rampant corruption and the country’s crippling economic crisis. The deepening troubles at the state oil company, the country’s economic mainstay, threaten to further destabilize a nation and government facing a dire recession, soaring inflation and unbridled crime, as well as food and medicine shortages.

Due to higher prices, things are looking up for other oil-exporting countries, including even dysfunctional hellholes like Libya and Iraq…

Not Venezuela, the country with the largest proven reserves in the world. The state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, known as Pdvsa, teeters on the brink of collapse, its failures at once a symptom and a cause of the nation’s downward economic spiral.

Despite Maduro barking the standard socialist dictator rhetoric about the evils of capitalist America, Venezuela has been importing gasoline and diesel from the USA to meet domestic needs. But that won’t go on for long, since they can’t pay for it with the whole country about to go into default.

Socialism is socialism, no matter where tyrants and fools inflict it. This sums up the spirit of the Soviet Union:

Employees have lost all interest, said Emilio, a worker in the Cardón refinery who asked that his last name be withheld because he feared punishment by the authorities for criticizing the company. He said they were simply punching the clock.

Workers spend their days playing cars and dominoes, production having slowed to a crawl.

Milton Friedman’s wise words ring ever truer:

Under Chavez/Maduro, Venezuelans effectively put the federal government in charge of everything. Now they have nothing — not even oil, despite floating on a sea of it. No one even vaguely familiar with the past 100 years of world history could have expected a different outcome.

Christmas is much merrier when you don’t have to live under end-stage socialism. Better lit too:

Marilyn Pitre recalls taking her family on evening strolls at Christmas time through Altamira Plaza in Venezuela’s capital, soaking up the dazzling lights and giant tree made of light bulbs in a display that once drew comparisons to New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

That was before crisis struck Venezuela. Now the 40-year-old mother of two wouldn’t dare set foot in the plaza after dark, fearing robbers. And this season, for the first time in years, no festive lights will bring it to life.

Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, has trouble meeting its energy needs. As Milton Friedman observed,

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

Inflation is expected to hit 2,400 percent by the year’s end, said Henkel Garcia, director of the Caracas-based consulting firm Econometrica, adding that minimum wage workers today have a fifth of the purchasing power than nearly two decades ago, when the late President Hugo Chavez launched Venezuela’s socialist revolution.

Why would anyone inflict this on their own country? I would ask a Bernie Sanders supporter, but all I get from them is duckspeak.